Ethereum in 2025: Institutions Flood In as the 'Ivory Tower' Comes Down

This year, the world’s financial and tech power centers finally embraced Ethereum—and Ethereum, in turn, opened its doors wide to them.

• Institutions poured into Ethereum throughout 2025, with major banks and tech giants selecting its layer-2 ecosystem for tokenization and on-chain applications.
• Regulatory breakthroughs unlocked Wall Street demand, cementing Ethereum as the go-to network for traditional finance integration.
• The Ethereum Foundation shed its aloof reputation, aggressively courting enterprises and forging high-profile AI partnerships.

(Sources: CoinGecko)

In an industry famous for hype and self-promotion, Ethereum has long stood apart. Its builders prioritized technical excellence and an uncompromising vision of decentralization—sometimes to the point of seeming detached from broader economic and political realities.

But 2025 marked a turning point. Amid sweeping regulatory shifts for crypto, Ethereum quietly made massive inroads into the very centralized institutions it was once accused of ignoring. From Wall Street trading floors to mainstream discourse, this was the year Ethereum won over the establishment.

“The Winds Are at Our Back”

For years, Ethereum advocate Vivek Raman tried to convince traditional finance giants to build on the network.

“They politely showed me the door for four years,” Raman told Decrypt.

As co-founder of Etherealize—an organization dedicated to making Ethereum the backbone of global finance—he anticipated some progress in 2025 given crypto’s rising political clout. But even he was surprised by the scale.

“This year was validation beyond anything we expected,” Raman said.

Institutions, he observed, followed three clear trends:

1. An urgent push to extend operations onto blockchain networks.
2. Near-universal preference for Ethereum’s layered (L1 + L2) architecture.
3. Organic adoption—no heavy sales pitch required.

“People chose Ethereum because it’s simply the right place to do business,” Raman said.

The list of converts is extensive: Coinbase’s Base layer-2 became a Wall Street darling; Fidelity tokenized assets on Ethereum; SWIFT experimented with Ethereum-based settlement; Robinhood built its own L2 for tokenized stocks.

Globally, Upbit (South Korea), Ant Group (China), IHC (Abu Dhabi), Amundi (Europe), and Baillie Gifford (UK) all launched tokenization initiatives on Ethereum—predominantly via layer-2 solutions.

Efficiency, automation, reduced counterparty risk, broader capital access, and programmable transparency drew these conservative players in. Once risk-averse firms tend to herd, and Ethereum emerged as the consensus choice—building on momentum from 2024 pioneers like BlackRock.

Former Ethereum core developer and Etherealize co-founder Danny Ryan attributes the surge to regulatory legitimization. The July signing of the GENIUS Act provided a clear framework for stablecoins, signaling that blockchain activity is permissible—and by extension, legitimate.

“It didn’t explicitly greenlight full capital markets on-chain,” Ryan noted, “but it said: ‘You can do things legally on blockchains.’”

After GENIUS, “the winds are at our back,” Raman added.

Farewell to the Ivory Tower

The shift wasn’t only external. Inside the Ethereum Foundation, 2025 brought a deliberate reorientation.

James Smith, Head of Ecosystem at the Foundation, acknowledged past criticism: “There were unhappy people internally and externally.”

The Foundation had long been seen as operating from an “ivory tower”—prioritizing purist principles over outreach to centralized entities and smaller builders.

Smith’s mandate this year was to overhaul that approach.

“We’ve become far more intentional about institutional engagement in 2025,” he said. Dedicated teams now help serious enterprises integrate with Ethereum.

Examples include targeted one-day conferences: one in Zurich explaining staking to corporates, another in New York showcasing Ethereum’s privacy tools for business use.

Such initiatives represent a “180-degree sea change,” Smith said. “This is a pivotal moment for Ethereum—that’s why it’s essential.”

AI Becomes Central to Ethereum’s Vision

One booming sector drawing heavy focus is artificial intelligence. As AI agents proliferate, Ethereum developers see bots as the network’s future primary users.

This fall, the Foundation launched a dedicated AI team, announcing collaborations with giants like Google to bridge on- and off-chain AI development.

Davide Crapis, head of the AI initiative, views growing elite adoption not as compromise but as validation.

“The priority is building the best decentralized technology possible,” Crapis said. “When they see the value, they will come.”

Ethereum 2025: A Year of Mutual Embrace

2025 redefined Ethereum’s relationship with centralized power. Wall Street discovered a reliable, scalable blockchain partner; Ethereum discovered that opening doors to institutions doesn’t mean sacrificing principles.

The result: a network no longer on the fringes, but increasingly at the center of global finance and technology’s next wave.